Cushioned furniture such as sofas and chairs provide persons with seating furniture while also providing rooms with ornamentation arising from the style and materials of which the furniture is manufactured. The cushions provide a resilient and comfortable place for persons to occupy such as for reading, watching television, and talking with others such as parties or social events, among other purposes. The cushions are typically covered with ornamental fabrics and may be attached to frame members of the furniture or may be separate cushions held within upholstered casings. Such separate cushions enable removal for cleaning of the frame members of the furniture, for example, for cleaning dust and articles that may accumulate in the gaps between adjacent cushions. While cushions in furniture provide comfortable seating, occupancy by persons of upholstered cushions often have drawbacks which are typically tolerated as acceptable aspects of upholstered cushioned furniture. One drawback to cushioned furniture is involves cushions or pillows formed with feathers and/or down. The feathers break-down over time and usage, and result in reduced billowing for use as cushions for furniture. These pillows and cushions require re-fluffing, such as by manual fluffing of the enclosed feathers and down to allow the feathers and down to breathe and remain light and separated during non-use of the cushion to avoid clumping and reduce break-down during use.
Another drawback is a perception by the seating occupant of increased warmth created while sitting. The perception arises in response to body heat production local to the occupied seating. Typically, a normal core temperature for a person about is 98.6° F., while skin temperature is around 92° F. Because the ambient temperature is often lower than that, a person emits body heat to the surroundings. The cushions on which a person sits thereby become warmer, and as the area of occupancy becomes warmer, the person sitting on the cushion perceives an increase is ambient sitting temperature. For example, a person watching television may leave a seat which is then occupied by second person. The second person would likely detect the increased temperature of the recently-vacated seating area (adjusted for ambient room temperature and time since vacating the occupancy as the seating area returns to ambient temperature).
Further, the vacating person may also leave a depression or valley in the resilient cushion. The depression or valley forms in response to the compression loading of the person to the cushion. Typically, cushions rebound after vacating of the loading to a recovered relaxed, non-compressed state, although the time for such rebound varies depending on a number of factors including ambient temperature, occupancy time, occupant mass, and resilience performance characteristics of the cushions. While cushions typically rebound to a normal relaxed state, the appearance of such valleys is detracting and notwithstanding the responsive rebound, may over time and use, lose the rebounding performance and create rather a permanent valley which detracts from the ornamental appearance and useful life of the cushioned furniture.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for seating furniture having upholstered seating cushions that readily rebounds from seating occupancy impressions while providing during occupancy a positive impact on perceived thermal comfort by reducing increases in local ambient temperature arising from body heat production. It is to such that the present invention is directed.